The dedicated efforts of the Bush
administration to take control of Iraq -- by war, military coup, or
some other means -- have elicited various analyses of the guiding
motives. Offering one interpretation, Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace observes that these plans conform to
"the classic modern strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy,
which is to divert mass discontent into nationalism," inspired by fear
of enemies about to destroy us. That strategy is of critical
importance if the "radical nationalists" setting policy in Washington
hope to advance their announced plan for "unilateral world domination
through absolute military superiority," while conducting a major
assault against the interests of the large majority of the domestic
population. Lieven doubtless speaks for many when he describes the US
as "a menace to itself and to mankind," on its present course.

As history shows, it is all too
easy for unscrupulous leaders to terrify the public. And that is the
natural method to divert attention from the fact that tax cuts for the
rich and other devices are undermining prospects for a decent life for
the middle class and the poor, and for future generations. Economist
Paul Krugman reported that "literally before the dust had settled"
over the World Trade Center ruins, influential Republicans signaled
that they were "determined to use terrorism as an excuse to pursue a
radical right-wing agenda." He and others have been documenting how
they have pursued this agenda relentlessly since. The strategy has
proven highly effective for the congressional elections. And when the
presidential campaign begins, Republican strategists surely do not
want people to be asking questions about their pensions, jobs, health
care, and other such matters. Rather, they should be praising their
heroic leader for rescuing them from imminent destruction by a foe of
colossal power, and marching on to confront the next powerful force
bent on our destruction.

These ideas are particularly
natural for the recycled Reaganites who hold influential positions in
the current administration, and are replaying a familiar script: drive
the country into deficit so as to be able to undermine social
programs, declare a “war on terror” (as they did in 1981) and conjure
up one devil after another to frighten the population into obedience:
Libyan hit-men prowling in Washington to assassinate the brave cowboy
surrounded by tanks in the White House; Sandinistas only two-days
march from Texas as they pursue their plans to conquer the hemisphere
following the script of Mein Kampf; Arab terrorists seeking to
kill Americans everywhere while Qaddafi plans to “expel America from
the world,” the cowboy wailed; Hispanic narcotraffickers seeking to
destroy the youth (but stopped just in time by Bush #1, kidnapped in
“Operation Just Cause” and tried in Florida for crimes mostly
committed on the CIA payroll); and on, and on.

More generally, the September 11
terrorist atrocities provided an opportunity and pretext to implement
long-standing plans to take control of Iraq's immense oil wealth, a
central component of the Persian Gulf resources that the State
Department, in 1945, described as "a stupendous source of strategic
power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history"
(referring specifically to Saudi Arabia, but the intent is more
general). US intelligence predicts that these will be of even greater
significance in the years ahead. The issue has never been access.
The same intelligence analyses anticipate that the US will rely on
more secure Atlantic Basin supplies. The same was true after World
War II. The US moved quickly to gain control over Gulf resources, but
not for its own use; North America was the major producer for decades
afterwards, and since then Venezuela has generally been the leading
exporter to the US. What matters is control over the "material
prize," which funnels enormous wealth to the US in many ways, and the
"stupendous source of strategic power," which translates into a lever
of “unilateral world domination.”

A different interpretation is that
the administration believes exactly what it says: Iraq has suddenly
become a threat to our very existence and to its neighbors. We must
ensure that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the means for
producing them are utterly destroyed, and the monster himself
eliminated. And quickly. A war in Iraq should optimally be waged
during the winter, and winter 2003-4 will be too late. By then the
mushroom cloud that National Security Adviser Rice predicts may have
already consumed us.

Let us assume that this
interpretation is correct. If the regional powers fear Washington
more than Saddam, as they apparently do, that reveals their limited
grasp of reality. It is only an accident that by next winter the
presidential campaign will be underway. And other doubts can somehow
also be put aside. How then can we achieve these announced goals?

Many plans have been discussed, but
one simple one seems to have been ignored -- perhaps because it is
regarded as insane. The judgment is correct, but it is instructive to
ask why.

The modest proposal is to encourage
Iran to invade Iraq, providing them with the necessary logistic and
military support, from a safe distance (missiles, bombs, bases,
etc.). The proposal has many advantages over those now being
considered.

First, Saddam will be overthrown,
in fact torn to shreds along with anyone close to him. Any trace of
WMD will be eliminated, not only now but for successor regimes, along
with means for producing them, a great boon for disarmament
generally. Iran has far stronger motivation to achieve this end than
the Bush circles.

Second, there will be few if any
American casualties. Or Israeli casualties. Scud attacks on Israel
would not deter the liberation of Iraq by Israel's prime enemy.

True, many Iraqis and Iranians will
die. But that can hardly be a concern. The Bush circles – as noted,
mostly recycled Reaganites -- strongly supported Saddam when he
attacked Iran, quite oblivious to the enormous human cost, either then
or under the subsequent sanctions regime. Saddam is likely to use
chemical weapons, but that too can hardly be a concern. The current
leadership firmly backed the "Beast of Baghdad" when he used chemical
weapons against Iran in the Reagan years, and when he used gas against
"his own people": Kurds, who were his own people in the sense in which
Cherokees were Andrew Jackson's people. The current Washington
planners continued to support the Beast after he had committed by far
his worst crimes, even providing him with means to develop WMD,
nuclear and biological, right up to the invasion of Kuwait, fulfilling
“our duty to support U.S. exporters,” as they explained (John Kelly,
Assistant Secretary of State with responsibility for the Middle East,
early 1990). England joined happily. Bush #1 and Cheney also
effectively authorized Saddam's slaughter of Shi'ites in March 1991,
in the interests of "stability," as was soberly explained. They
withdrew their support for his attack on the Kurds only under great
international and domestic pressure. So surely the human costs cannot
be a concern.

The Cold War had no relevance;
Russia joined the good guys in supporting Saddam. Nor was the Iran
war the determinative factor, as demonstrated by their continued
support for Saddam well after the war ended.

Third, the UN will be no problem.
It will be unnecessary to explain to the world that the UN is relevant
when it follows orders, otherwise not. In the words of a high
administration official after Congress authorized the use of military
force, "we don't need the Security Council. So if the Security
Council wants to stay relevant, then it has to give us similar
authority." If anyone objects to the liberation of Iraq, the US can
always use the veto to allow it to proceed.

Fourth, Iran surely has far better
credentials for the task than Washington. Unlike the Bush
administration, Iran has no record of support for the murderous Saddam
and his programs of WMD. Rather, they were the primary victims of the
Iraqi attack backed by the US and Britain (among others). It can be
objected, correctly, that we cannot trust the Iranian leadership, but
surely that is even more true of those who continued to aid Saddam
well after his worst crimes. Furthermore, we will be spared the
embarrassment of professing blind faith in our leaders in the manner
that we justly ridicule in totalitarian states. There will be no need
for a tacit appeal to a miraculous religious conversion -- for which
there is not a trace of evidence, even the minimal decency of
conceding past crimes. And we will not have to descend to advocating
an invasion because the leadership in Washington have a special
"responsibility" to compensate for their past crimes, for which they
show no regret, an argument that has quite intriguing consequences
when generalized.

Fifth, the liberation will be
greeted with enthusiasm by much of the population, far more so than if
Americans invade. People will be cheering on the streets of Basra and
Karbala, and we can join Iranian journalists in hailing the nobility
and just cause of the liberators.

Sixth, Iran can move towards
instituting "democracy," again with credentials no worse than those of
Washington, as a look at history will quickly reveal. Washington's
contributions to democracy in the region are well-known, and Iranian
reformers will have some advantages in pursuing the task, if only
because the majority of the population is Shi'ite, and Iran would have
fewer problems than the US in granting them some say in a successor
government. As for the Kurds, if they seek any real autonomy that is
likely to spark a Turkish invasion. In the light of Washington's
decisive contribution to massive Turkish atrocities against the Kurds
in the 1990s, some of the worst of that grisly decade, the argument
for a US role in this regard are rather weak, to put it mildly.

There will be no problem in gaining
access to Iraqi oil, just as US companies could easily exploit Iranian
energy resources right now, if Washington would permit it.

Without proceeding, the proposal
seems to offer many advantages over those that are actually
discussed. What then is the fly in the ointment? There are several
basic problems.

First, the US will not be able to
use the "stupendous source of strategic power" as a lever of world
domination, and will have to share the great "material prize" with
others, beyond what the leadership would prefer. Second, the "classic
modern strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy" would be
foiled. The domestic problems of the Bush administration would remain
unresolved: the population would be freed from fear and could pay
attention to what is being done to them. And finally, the plans for
"unilateral world domination" would suffer a serious blow.

As Lieven correctly notes, the
"radical nationalists" in Washington have very close links with
Israeli ultra-nationalists. In the 1990s, Richard Perle and Douglas
Feith were even writing position papers for Benyamin Netanyahu, who
outflanks Ariel Sharon on the extremist right. The usually reliable
Israel press has been reporting their connections and plans for some
time. These include far-reaching plans for reconstructing the Middle
East along lines resembling the former Ottoman empire, but now with
the US and its offshore military base in Israel in charge, cooperating
with Turkey: what the Egyptian press has described as "the axis of
evil," US-Israel-Turkey. According to some reported plans, a
Hashemite monarchy might extend from Jordan to parts of Iraq and Saudi
Arabia, and the Palestinians could then be "transferred" somewhere
else, perhaps Jordan. The war against Iran may well already be
underway. A good part of the Israeli air force is based in Turkey,
and is reported to be flying along the Iranian border from US bases
there. Plans for partition of Iran are being developed, perhaps
pursued, according to US specialist sources. Lieven and others
suggest that the radical nationalists have similar plans extending as
far as China, and may go on for decades "until a mixture of terrorism
and the unbearable social, political and environmental costs of US
economic domination put paid to the present order of the world."

It is not only much of the world
that regards them as a menace. The same is true of highly-regarded
strategic analysts and Middle East specialists here, like Anthony
Cordesman, who is about as “hardline” as they come within sane
sectors. According to Israel’s leading diplomatic correspondent,
Akiva Eldar, Cordesman has warned that Washington should “make it
clear that its commitment to Israel does not involve a commitment to
its sillier armchair strategists and more vocally irresponsible
hardliners," referring not so obliquely to Perle and Feith, who are
close to power centers in Washington.

On returning to Israel from
meetings with high level Pentagon figures, the respected strategic
analyst Ehud Sprintzak commented that "We are talking about a
revolutionary group, with a totally different approach to the Arab
world and the threats coming from it. One can summarize their
approach in one sentence: they think that the Arab world is a world
of retards who only understand the language of force." That is an
understatement, as the recent reaction to Germany's minor disobedience
revealed.

The modest proposal of an Iranian
liberation is indeed insane, but not without merit. It is far more
reasonable than the plans actually being implemented, or to be more
accurate, it would be more reasonable if the professed goals had any
relation to the real ones. As for the actual motives, the alternative
reviewed at the outset has a great deal of plausibility.